


Next to Nothing

by cuneifire (orphan_account)



Series: wrist, ankle, eye, heart [4]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-28
Updated: 2019-07-28
Packaged: 2020-07-23 23:01:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20016208
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/cuneifire
Summary: The first thing Tony sees when he leaves the room is the nameSteve Rogerscarving itself with delicate black ink onto his wrist. The first thing he thinks is,oh, fuck.





	Next to Nothing

Steve Rogers is most certainly a dick. In fact, he’s enough of a dick that as soon as he gets within breathing distance of Tony- as soon as they shake hands- a burning pain shoots up his wrist, enough to make it so he has to pretend to be leaning casually against the table while Fury babbles, only catching the occasional word through the blur of white noise. “Captain,” and “America,” come up, along with “superhero”, “serum”, “World War Two”, and “HYDRA”, so Tony puts it together fast enough. 

By the time he finally comes to, Rogers is staring at him, one eyebrow cocked curiously, lip turned down. Tony hears something about- “Howard’s son”- oh yeah, that’s him, bring on the roll call- and immediately guesses where this is going. 

He says something like “Salutations, Capsicle,” which probably wasn’t his best retort, because  _ goddamn  _ did someone rip off his skin without him noticing? And Rogers looks at him, expression falling. He says some stuff, and irony of all ironies, all Tony catches is- “You’re nothing like your father,” And Tony’s heard that a million and one times before, but somehow it burns more knowing it’s from  _ Captain America,  _ the supposedly always good hero who Tony grew up staring at pictures of, who he idolized for about five years before realizing that idols weren’t really ever what they were made out to be, look at his father. And lo and behold, he’s been correct yet again. 

That’s what he thinks. What he does is look Rogers in the eyes and grin, and what he says is, “True. Welcome to the twenty-first century, Rogers. Everything’s new and improved, now.” 

Rogers says something after that, and it sound kind vicious and cutting in a polite 1940s kind of way, but Tony doesn’t stick around to hear it, because he is Tony Stark, billionaire playboy superhero philanthropist and he could probably buy half of SHIELD if he needed to, so he sees no reason to listen to the same old tirade he’d been getting since he was three from the mouth of perhaps the only person in the world he’d ever really admired. 

His wrist hurts like a bitch as he walks out. He winces, tugging down his sleeve to check what on earth could be going on, wondering vaguely if something’s gone wrong with the arc reactor. 

He nearly trips as he tugs on his sleeve, just barely keeping himself from falling face-first into some nice, friendly concrete and he stumbles to keep his wits about him. He regains his footing but can’t make himself move. 

The first thing Tony sees when he leaves the room is the name  _ Steve Rogers  _ carving itself with delicate black ink onto his wrist. The first thing he thinks is,  _ oh, fuck. _

.

Theoretically, he knew it was a possibility. Just about everyone  _ has  _ a soulmate, somewhere out there, but the likelihood that you’ll find them at some point in your life and not dead and within an age range that doesn’t feel like cradle robbing are, despite what the movies might say, astronomically low. There’s also the fact that soulmates are just as likely to be nonreciprocal as they are to match, and, you know, the whole fact that it  _ makes absolutely no sense.  _ When he was twelve, Tony got so sick of everyone in his class going all  _ Oh look at them, so cute, they must be soulmates?  _ And  _ I wonder when I’ll meet mine?  _ And  _ Amazing to believe that somewhere out there, there’s the perfect person out there for you, someone who’ll love you no matter what?  _ And decided to scientifically prove that soulmates were bullshit. 

Because, come on -a name burning its way onto your wrist as soon as you touched someone? It made no sense. 

Two months and a lot of all-nighters later, Tony was left with nothing more than a shit ton of frustration and a bitter cynicality towards the whole concept that has served him fantastically ever since. He hadn’t resigned himself to the fact that he would never find the supposed ‘destined love of his life’- he had  _ relished  _ in it. No soulmate meant no one to be obligated to, no one who would be capable of getting closer than he could hold them back, no one to be disappointed in when whoever they were inevitably backed off, something like ‘you’re too much for me’ on the tip of their tongue. 

And here he was- not only did he have a soulmate, but said soulmate was  _ Steve Rogers.  _ Captain America. His idol since he was- what, five years old? And also a dick who thought him something around the level of a malfunctioning clone of his father. And who also had no guarantee of even enjoying his company, never mind loving him back. To the contrary, if their first encounter had proven anything. Fan-fucking-tastic. 

Normally, Tony would’ve done some research first. But twelve year old him had saved him that pain, so it allowed him to just go straight to the next step on his problem-solving checklist: alcohol, and then pretending the problem in question simply did not exist.

It’d been serving him pretty well so far, after all. 

.

The next day, or rather three o’clock in the morning that night, it starts to bother him. Because there on his wrist is Steve Rogers’s name, practically announced from a Times Square billboard for all to see, and sure, he could get a watch or wear long sleeves, but watches can be lost and sleeves can be rolled up, and worst of all someone could  _ notice  _ and start to wonder why he would be wearing long sleeves in the dead of summer, and then it would be the end of him. 

He imagines the press, “Millionaire playboy and national hero???” “Tony Stark: The loneliest man on Earth” Because there was no way the mark was reciprocal, and in all likelihood Rogers would gladly show his bare wrist to anyone who asked, as soon as he found out whose name was written on Tony’s. Or this, “Stark Industries stock drops by 40% after the discovery of Tony Stark’s soulmate” because one could always count on Wall Street to be conservative. 

It just wasn’t a risk he could take. 

“Jarvis?” He said, pushing aside the suit adjustments he had been fiddling with until then. 

“Yes, sir?”

“Do we still have the data on those skins graphs?”

“You mean the ones you declared ‘defunct, useless cosmetic pieces of shit’?” Jarvis says, and Tony really should have gotten himself a bot who didn’t speak sarcasm like a native language. 

“Yes, those ones.” he says, running a hand through his hair as the design pops up. 

“May I ask why, sir?” Jarvis says after a short pause, and Tony waves a hand. 

“Jarvis, check the net for cases where famous people’s soulmates have been found out, and the matches have been unideal.”

There’s a whir, and then another pause, and then Jarvis says, “I see, sir. Steve Rogers is henceforth an unsuitable match?” And thank god it’s three in the morning and Pepper’s out. 

“Yeah, don’t mention it or I throw you out the window and burn the remains.” 

“Seeing as I have no physical form, that would be rather impossible, sir.”

“Yeah, yeah, they all say that until I prove ‘em wrong.” Tony says, and the room lapses into silence as he stares at the designs that’ve just popped up on the hologram. 

They’re old, maybe three or four years, from when he got back from Afghanistan and thought he might need to fix the skin near his arc reactor, because he didn’t trust a doctor to tie his shoes and not somehow fuck it up. He’d turned out to not need them, and thank god for that because they’d had absolutely zero medical benefits, and as it turns out he is  _ awful  _ with any sort of design meant to look like it’s made from organic material. 

But hey, he can remedy that. He’s got… maybe three days until Pepper will notice he hasn’t left his room. 

He gets to work. 

.

The final product is not perfect. It’s nothing like what Banner might have been able to do, had he been here (although: ha, no chance in hell Tony would have ever asked him). Because the idea of wearing other people’s skin is  _ creepy,  _ and way too supervillain-esque for him, he designs what’s essentially a small screen that attaches permanently to the inside of his wrist, just where the name should be, which is a piece of cake, if a bit painful to insert. The hard part is making it look like actual, you know,  _ skin,  _ which takes him a whole two and a half days (and, according to Jarvis, sixteen point five cups of straight black coffee). At first he tries to actually put some sort of cover of the screen, but that would require he  _ sew  _ this thing onto his wrist, which would be pretty obvious. So instead he gets Jarvis to take a picture of the skin on his bare wrist, then impose it as a slight hologram on the screen over his marked one. The texture isn’t all that different unless you’re looking for it, and besides, very few people are grabbing him by the wrist most of the time anyways. 

He thinks about getting a watch, but then pushes the idea aside. He’ll build up to it slowly, so it doesn’t seem unexpected, and so no one puts two and two together of him meeting Rogers and immediately adopting an interest in wristwatches. 

He finally gathers up the courage to go out into the day and fetch a cup of coffee from the kitchen. 

He’s still staring at the machine when his whole world goes sideways, tilting on its axis. 

He blinks, and he sees himself somewhere in a dark underground room, a bunch of- people?- no, superheroes, surrounding him. Thor, Bruce, and a bunch of other he could swear he’s never seen. He’s in his suit. 

And on the table is Captain America. Captain America, the same one Tony met a handful of days ago. Captain America, who wakes up, glancing around frantically, “Who are you? Where am I? What’s happening?” 

And Tony- Iron Man, who raises a hand, saying, “That’s what we were about to ask  _ you _ !” And something in Tony’s brain clicks- he can’t figure out what it is, but this is  _ important,  _ this is  _ different,  _ this moment makes history but it’s not his-

The light switch for the coffee buzzes. Tony almost falls over as he sweeps it up, blinking repeatedly. He can barely process the thought of  _ what the fuck was that,  _ never mind the actual- whatever it was- that he just saw. 

He downs the whole thing and then crashes on the couch without even a second thought. 

.

He wakes up to someone shaking his shoulder, and  _ ow,  _ is that his wrist again? He is ninety nine point nine percent sure soulmate marks aren’t supposed to hurt after first contact. And they aren’t even supposed to hurt that  _ much,  _ jesus christ. 

He blinks away sleep from his eyes and looks up to see Pepper gazing at him, concerned expression on her face. “Tony?” she says, and Tony is struck with a sudden bout of  _ dear god does he ever love this woman  _ and that he never wants to lose her and if she tells her he has a soulmate it’ll all be over, this whole thing will collapse in on itself like the obvious dream it is. 

They’d only briefly mentioned soulmates when they'd first gotten together, in the form of ‘I don’t have one, you don’t have one, that’s fine.’ But she wouldn’t believe him if he told her he wanted her more than his soulmate. Pepper believed in that stuff, more so than him, at least. She would leave him.

Everyone leaves him eventually, but he’s selfish. He wants Pepper to stick around a while longer. 

So he sticks on a smile and blinks up at her. 

“Hey, baby. How’s the company without me?” And some of the concern fades from her eyes, but not enough, she’s always so damned  _ worried  _ and he doesn’t know how to get her to stop, it makes him so fucking  _ frustrated _ . Because he can save the world and fix his heart with a car battery and build flying robo suits, but he can’t make Pepper happy, and sometimes it seems like that’s more important. 

She sees straight past his ruse, of course, sitting down on the couch next to him and pushing some of the hair from his face. Her fingers feel cool against his forehead. “Tony,” she says, “How long were you awake?”

He grins. She doesn’t retract her line of questioning. He holds back a sigh. “Uh, maybe three days?” He says, because truth is even he kind of forgets. Could’ve been two, or four, or five. 

She’s beautiful. She  _ cares.  _ He should tell her. She shakes her head, but he can still see the slight smile on her face as she touches his shoulder. “Goddamn, Tony,” She says quietly, almost low enough that he can’t hear and he opens his mouth to tell her, tell her  _ honey, I have a soulmate, but you’ll always mean more than some ink on my wrist,  _ but the words stick in his mouth. 

She pushes off the couch, tilting her head. “Were you going to say something?” She looks curious, but not surprised. Sometimes he forgets other people are in the room, when he’s thinking. 

He opens his mouth. Shuts in. Then he shakes his head. “Nah, don’t worry.”

He goes and sits on the roof that night. He can't work and he can't sleep, and only the stars would want him for company. 

.

Steve wears cuffs, those things everyone wore back in the forties. Black straps around the wrist, and back in the day everyone wore them, so no one could tell anyone’s soulmate, when they got them. It made things easier, according to the history books. Back then, you didn’t show anyone the name, unless they were actually your soulmate. 

So luck has it that Tony’s soulmate is perhaps the only person this side of the Northern Hemisphere whose secretism is so great Tony can’t even tell if the guy  _ has  _ a soulmate, nevermind if it’s him. Then again, Tony has a secret weapon: science. 

Laws of probability dictate that  _ no, Steve Rogers is not your soulmate, Tony Stark, what are you thinking, why would anyone ever want you like that, much less Captain-fucking-America.  _

Tony loves math, he swears, but there are times where the relationship is a bit on the rocks. 

Tony only notices it because when they’re sitting in the Helicarrier, Nick Fury yelling at them about teamwork and shitting communication, Steve starts fiddling with them. Tony doubts he does it consciously, but he keeps pulling them up just enough to reveal smudges of ink, illegible black scribbles inked on his wrist bone. 

Tony only tunes back into Fury’s speech when he’s taken it in. Steve had a soulmate. Steve has  _ met  _ his soulmate. Steve’s soulmate is not dead. 

Well, dead is a bit different from the nursing home. He makes a note to look into that, sometime. 

Fury’s speech comes back into focus just in time for everything to go to hell. 

Working with Steve is- weird, to say the least. He’s so used to arguing with the guy that Tony expected working with him to be actual hell, but it’s… not. Sure, he would’ve preferred if the helicarrier weren’t falling apart on them as they spoke, but hey, circumstances demand. And Steve’s… competent, if nothing else. And he’s… actually kind of funny, wry in a way Tony’s sure most people miss because they’re too busy see Captain America, role model and national icon, not the man behind the mask. 

Tony was one of those people. 

Getting thrown out and about in one of the propellers, he thinks maybe he’ll try not to do that so much, if Steve ever gets him out of this. 

.

From across his apartment, Loki gives him a smile. 

“It all crashes and burns from here on out, you know.” 

“If I wanted to listen to genocidal maniacs rabble about their future plans for world domination, I would’ve listened to a video clip from the ‘40s.” The reply’s out of his mouth before he can really think about it, but Loki pays him no mind, simply casting him a disregarding glance. Tony fidgets with his gauntlets. They’re right above where his soulmark would be, if anyone could see it. 

Loki doesn’t notice, thank God. Instead he’s rambling about some stupid shit, probably how he’ll have the whole world under the control of his glorious iron fist-

“-sad how he’ll never love you back, no?”

Tony snaps to attention. “What?” He says, and the words sound sharp even to him, and Loki’s eyes narrow in what is probably Evil Maniac for enjoyment. 

“Your soulmate?” And oh, Tony is  _ not  _ going to be played like this. 

“Soulmate.” He says, raising an eyebrow, setting his glass down, watching the light swirl in his whisky before he looks up to meet Loki’s eyes. “Because  _ I  _ have a soulmate.” There was, of course, a one-in-two chance that his soulmate would be a man, so no doubt Loki had just punched in a guess of some sort.  _ Why,  _ Tony had no idea. 

Loki just smiles. “Yes. Steve Rogers, no?” He says, eyes cutting. 

Tony keeps his posture calm, his fingers steady as he takes another sip. He can do this. He can do this. But something in him doubts that, even as he replies calmly with, “Okay buddy, nice one-in-seven-billion shot you’re taking there, but seriously, what the hell is it you’re  _ actually  _ getting at?” Because Loki is getting at  _ something,  _ but hell if Tony has any clue what it is. 

“Stark, stop lying,” Which, coming from the  _ god of lies,  _ is a little burlesque, and okay, yes, Tony bristles. “I can tell. It’s in the-” he waves a hand around in a spectacularly unhelpful gesture. “-aura. Midgardians don’t have a word for it, and on Asgard we don’t use it anymore.” There’s a story there, Tony’s sure, but he one hundred percent does not care to hear it. 

He rolls his eyes. “Alright. Point.” And Loki raises an eyebrow, tips his head a little.

“My point is it ends in heartbreak, Stark.” here his smile is vicious, but Tony thinks- just for a second- maybe there’s something else there, a piece of the puzzle he’s missing. “It always does.” Loki grins and Tony is distracted as all hell when the blow hits. 

He stands up shakily, swallowing blood and running, landing on the lookout, facing the skyline. He looks down, thinks of vertigo, and jumps. 

“Sorry, guys, just got caught in a bit of a holdup. Guy sure likes the sound of his own voice.” And he chuckles but it sounds false as he talks into the comm, falling fast as his suit wraps around his wrists and up his arms. 

“Anything important?” He hears Steve says, and he smiles ruefully, shaking his head and hoping his voice doesn’t sound too bitter. 

“Nothing at all.” 

.

The dreams are one of the rarer features of soulmates. It’s reserved, apparently, for the people with such brilliant, bruning connections that it shines through infinite universes. When he did his research all those years ago, Tony was convinced it was all bullshit. 

But he has those dreams now, dreams he hadn’t had before he met Steve. Sometimes he’s an explorer, and Steve is still Captain America but nobody knows it. Sometimes he’s the one who found Steve, the one who runs the Avengers. Sometimes he’s just an ordinary human- no money, no suit, and sometimes Steve is just that, too. Sometimes they’re still superheroes, but no one else is. 

Once, they get married. 

It feels a bit like choking on a red string. A string he never asked for, never even wanted. 

.

The problem is that Steve Rogers is increasingly difficult  _ not  _ to fall in love with. After saving the world with him, it dawns upon Tony that the man isn't actually one hundred percent awful. Maybe ninety percent. Eighty.

He's actually pretty nice, when he's not deliberately antagonizing you. And when you're not deliberately antagonizing him. 

After the Avengers move into his house (and sometimes Tony wonders how the fuck that happened), he sees Steve, well, more. And he notices some things. 

Steve has a schedule set down to the final seconds. He eats at regular times. He goes to bed at eleven o’clock sharp every night. He’s always up by six, always cleans up after himself in the kitchen. Sometimes he even makes the rest of them breakfast, and Tony’s pretty sure that’s the only healthy meal any of the Avengers will actually  _ eat.  _ His room is bare, just a desk and a bed and unmarked walls. He still doesn’t really know how to use a tablet. 

Sometimes Tony will look outside his workshop and find Steve wandering the halls, this look in his eyes like he’s completely lost. And Tony’s hands will twitch over the wirework and he’ll wonder what it would be like if he found the courage to step outside. Sometimes he swears that Steve is looking at him, when he thinks Tony’s distracted, but Tony’s pretty sure that’s just his mind tricking him, that Steve’s gaze is just caught on the wall behind him, or staring at a screen. 

Sometimes it’ll be just him and Steve, in the place, when Natasha and Clint are out on Spy Business and Thor’s gallivanting across the wider universe and Bruce is on a yoga retreat or something, and Tony will stumble out of the workshop at god-knows-what hour in the morning and find a plate full of bacon and eggs, and a cup of coffee, half cold. There’s never any sort of note or acknowledgement of it from Steve, but Tony will always smile. Then it’ll all immediately come crashing down on him that he’s being a total  _ idiot,  _ and he’ll just shut up and eat his goddamned breakfast. 

It’s one of those days again, where the whole place feels strangely empty without all the footsteps and yelling. Just him and Steve, Tony in the workshop and Steve probably sleeping, like a normal person. 

He’s just about ready to turn it in for the night (and it’s only two AM, Pepper would be proud) 

when his vision goes white with pain, and his hands slam against the scattered machinery on his desk, the pain in his temples is blinding-

It subsides, falling away like nothing had ever happened. He’s left with a dull throbbing in his wrist. He taps the screen, giving it a fingerprint. His name is still black, in that perfect Spencerian script he knows Steve writes in (keyboards, apparently, lack character).

Tony wonders, vaguely, if something’s wrong. He’d heard rumors of soulmates sharing pain, emotion, hell even  _ thought-  _ but what on earth could be troubling Steve at this hour of the night? Everything had been quiet for months now. It was almost disconcerting, really. 

He walked by Steve’s room anyways, bothered by some compulsion that he couldn’t- and didn’t really want to- explain. He stops by Steve’s room, knocking once, and then he pauses. He tries three times, before feeling unbearably pathetic and having to step away. Steve is sleeping, he tells himself. Steve is fine. 

He swears he’s going to go to bed after that, but he’s pulled on some bare string up to the roof again. When he was a kid, Tony had tried to run away. Once Howard caught on, the only place he’d had left was the roof. He’d looked at the stars, and thought that one day he’d fly. He never expected to be right. 

So maybe it’s luck, or karma, or some other miscellaneous concept that Tony doesn’t really believe in, but his feet take him to the roof and he steps out of the window and stares at the stars and for a second he can close his eyes and it all makes sense. 

He turns on his heel, sits down, leans back and stares at the sky. 

“I never knew much about constellations,” he hears someone say, and shoots right up. 

It’s Steve, sketchbook in hand, working on a penciled sketch Tony can’t quite make out in the dimmed light. He’s got this tentative look on his face, like he wants to smile but can’t tell if he should. When he was little, Tony used to see that look a lot, in the mirror. He erased it from his repertoire. 

Steve looks back to the stars. “But they always did look beautiful.” He smiles out at the skyline, turning to a new page. 

Tony searches for words and finds himself coming up painfully blank. Steve shoots him another glance, and Tony’s just trying not to look too hard at Steve’s profile, trying to say anything but,  _ like you.  _

He coughs. What he comes up with is, “Uh, yeah.” His eyes fall to the tiling, but he still catches Steve’s disappointed glance. He opens his mouth with the sole thought of filling up the empty space, of maybe leaving one person just a bit less disappointed in him than they should be.

“I always used to come up here when I was a kid. Whenever my dad,- well. Whenever my parents weren’t around, which was, y’know, not really a rare occasion. I’d tell myself that hey, maybe they didn’t want to listen to me, but maybe- maybe there was something there, looking out for me. Maybe there was- I don’t know, aliens? Maybe someone would want to talk. It made me feel- less alone.” 

His eyes go wide when he realizes what he’s said, and he turns to Steve, who’s looking at him with his lips slightly parted, the same way Steve looks at a battlefield plan. Like there’s a variable, something to his observations that he can’t figure out. And maybe something more, maybe-

“Now, I know there’s just more shit that wants to kill you.” He faked a sigh, shoulders still trembling just a bit wondering  _ why did he say all that.  _ “Yet another childhood dreamed ruined.” 

Meeting Steve had been a childhood dream ruined, too. 

He stared out onto the horizon, refusing to meet Steve’s gaze. It doesn’t take long until any scrapes of conversation fades out into nothing but the sound of Steve’s pencil scratching against paper. Tony keeps his eyes fixed on the horizon for a long, long time. When he finally blinks, he realises he’d fallen asleep. 

Curling his fingers, he realizes there’s a paper trapped under them. Tilting his head curiously, he pulled it out from under his palm, taking it gingerly in his hands. It’s… Steve’s sketch of the New York skyline, a dark night filled with pulsing stars, and Tony wonders at how Steve managed to make a city of twelve million people feel lonely. 

May as well keep it, he thinks, working out a kink in his neck as he stands. He could throw the paper in a cupboard somewhere, let it collect dust as a monument to what could’ve been. 

The wind kicks up a bit as he steps back through the window, the tip of the paper flying up to reveal a few lightly pencilled lines. Halfway through the windowsill, Tony stops and turns it over. 

It’s a quick sketch, difficult to make out in the barren dawn, and it takes his eyes a few seconds to fully see it. He blinks, and it all makes sense. 

It’s… them. The Avengers. Thor with his hammer and cape and a grin, Bruce tentatively holding a vial of something (Steve has written in the margins ‘possibly explosive’), Clint pointing his bow at the ceiling victoriously, Natasha with two knives dancing on the back of her hands, her lips almost curved up into a smile. 

And then there’s them. Steve and Tony. Steve’s got his shield and cowl down, a smile on his lips, his eyes shining as he grins. He’s got one hand wrapped around Tony’s shoulders. Tony, who’s the most in detail of all of them, grinning at the camera like there’s no tomorrow, grinning at  _ Steve  _ like there’s no tomorrow. 

He thinks that Steve’s as fantastic with could-have-beens as he is. 

He’s ready to crumple it up, throw it off the goddamn roof of the tower because this  _ isn’t his life,  _ it’s not, Tony chose that path a long fucking time ago, but something makes him hold on. 

There, at the bottom of the page, stenciled in so lightly he has to squint to read it. That same perfect cursive as on his wrist. 

_ Sometimes I get lonely, too.  _

Tony keeps the paper. And if there’s a tear stain or two smudging the graphite, well, no one needs to know. 

.

Steve’s hand is cold on his wrist as he tells Tony who killed them. 

It’s impossible. It  _ has  _ to be impossible. Those twins- that sceptre- there’s no way they could know, no one in the world does-

He checks his wrist. He tears the screen out without a second thought.  _ Steve Rogers  _ has gone bleach white on his skin. 

Steve is  _ dead.  _ And Tony killed him. 

He looks beautiful, no matter the blood on his mouth. His hand goes still on Tony's wrist as his last breath bleeds out, eyes fluttering shut. 

Tony tilts his head. His eyes fall to the cuff on Steve's wrist, rolled up past his elbow and ripped nearly to shreds. 

Gingerly, he turns Steve's wrist over, because before Tony was Iron Man he was an inventor, and curiosity will forever drive him.

Steve's wrist is blank. 

Well, now he knows. Knows what he has to do. 

He can still remember the look on Steve's face as he died. 

.

He tries to tell Pepper.  _ So many times.  _ But he can’t, he just can’t, his breath catches in his throat just thinking about it. 

Her hand grazes over his wrist, and she gives him a curious look, pulling at his hand. “What is this?”

Something hot and stifling contracts in his chest. “It’s- it’s a contraption I’m trying out. For Iron Man. Gauntlets that aren’t too apparent, that don’t come off with the metal detectors. You know. So it’s less easy for them to hurt me and all.” He gives her a smile. He thinks that’ll work. She hates it, that he goes out and puts himself in danger like this all the time. He doesn’t know how to explain to her that it’s as much a part of him as the inventions and the company and the reputation, that it’s taken root as some fundamental part of him, that if he was to stop being Iron Man a part of him feels like he’d simply cease  _ being.  _

He thinks Steve might understand. 

She looks to his wrist, raising an eyebrow. “You ever gonna take it off?” 

He gives her an easy smile. “Gotta keep it on for a test run. You know. A few weeks.” And he never explains to her that a few weeks becomes a few months becomes a few years, because she never asks again, because, well. It falls apart like he expected. 

He tried to keep it, tried so hard to hold on, but at the end of the day, that’s him. Tony Stark: All good things come to an end. 

He wishes it hadn’t. He’d take her over any soulmate. Because a smile from Steve makes him fall apart. A smile from Pepper, though, that feels like it could piece him back together. 

He would never have traded her- the one good thing he had- for what he has with Steve: next to nothing. 

.

Pepper left him and everything felt disjointed and unnatural. Steve is leaving him now, and it feels like crumbling a half-completed puzzle over a fifty story skyscraper. 

Tony can’t help that Steve is the first person in the room who his eyes go to when he tries to convince the Avengers to sign the accords. Steve is, in most ways unsaid, their leader. But he’s also the first person Tony would want to go to about strategy, tactics, about nightmares and other things he prefers not to talk about. 

He knows what Steve’s answer will be before he says it, of course. He knows what happened with SHIELD, with HYDRA. But some stupid part of him still had hope. Because deep down he thinks they’ll understand. That the damage they do needs to be reigned in, and if it isn’t now, then sooner or later the government will lock them all up. They’ll cause too much damage, something will inevitably blow up in their faces, and it won’t be something small. It will be  _ big.  _

He can see it. He knows. But Steve doesn’t, Steve won’t, because given two bad options Steve will punch his way through until a better one pops up, even if it kills him. Tony sees it, in the set of his jaw, the way he talks about freedom and America and truth and other things they’ve all given up on believing in. And the thing about Steve is he makes you can believe you can do the impossible. He inspires people.

And there’s nothing Tony can do to stop him. Because he falls for the same trap, over and over again. It’s amazing, how most of his life words were his only real weapon, how Steve can strip him of that without even trying. 

Tony doesn’t know how he does it. But he knows, when he looks Steve in the eye as he leaves the meeting room, that this is going to be another one of his biggest mistakes. 

.

One night, he stumbles across Vision, empty eyed as he looks out over the horizon. He doesn’t say anything. Tony sits down next to him. 

Vision turns to look at him, tone soft as he talks. 

“Are you in love?” He asks, and Tony knows that Vision had been looking in the direction of Wanda’s compound. 

The words stick heavy on his tongue. He thinks about Steve, smiling at him on the rooftop. Steve, stubborn as all hell and refusing to back down. Steve, in his dreams, one blow away from killing him. 

“No.”

Tony has told a lot of lies. This is not one of them.

(The difference between a good story and an outright lie is always in the framing.) 

Vision takes it in stride, turning back to look out over one pinpoint on the horizon. “I see,” he says, and for once, Tony wonders if he really does.

They stare out on the horizon together. Tony briefly wonders if he’s doing the right thing. 

He thinks that he doesn’t know anymore. 

.

Steve is staring up at him from under his shield, the words “I could do this all day,” ringing fresh in Tony’s ears. 

Tony goes in to land a punch, and stills almost completely when Steve catches his wrist. 

“In my dreams, you kill me,” He murmurs, softly, so that no one but Tony could possibly hear. His eyes are a bright burning fire, his lips a thin line. He looks like he expects Tony to deck him, or maybe put a bullet in his chest, same as those dreams he has, those dreams where it’s not him who pulls the trigger but he just stands there and watches and can’t bring himself to move.

Steve is daring him, taunting him with the idea that it’s the same. The dreams have something to do with being soulmates, but god if Tony knows how. It all ends the same. It all ends in ruins. 

And Tony, well, Tony smiles. He knows Steve won’t see it. He knows it doesn’t matter. But maybe, here, to no one but himself, he can plant a flag, built a monument,  _ I too felt pain. I too was human.  _

_ I too fell in love.  _

But all Steve can hear is a metallic laugh, and the words, “Not today.”

What Tony doesn’t say is  _ not ever.  _

.

Things are awkward after that. More awkward than usual. Tony’s gaze keeps slipping to Steve, wondering what would happen if he stopped, for just one second. He knows they could be- friends, if nothing else. But he can’t bring himself to reach out a hand- because what if that says to much?

He fought Steve once. He’s not sure he can look at him and face that rejection again. 

So he keeps up the facade, does what he does best. It’s better than nothing.

.

Fighting with Steve is  _ exhilarating.  _ No one had lied when they said Captain America was a tactical genius. No one had lied when they said Tony wasn’t half bad himself. But he hadn’t predicted it'd be like this. Going into battle and knowing Steve would be there to catch him if he needed, glancing out of the corner of his eye and seeing a flash of blue eyes and a determined look- something in him feels  _ right,  _ like a piece he’d been missing his whole life just slid into place and he barely even notices, because everything’s changed but it feels like it should’ve been like this the whole time. 

He thinks about that, when he goes to finally end it all. He thinks to Pepper,  _ I’m sorry.  _ To Morgan,  _ I love you.  _

And then he thinks about Steve, and thinks,  _ maybe in another lifetime.  _

.

.

.

Steve is the one who carries the body. 

Tony Stark is dead, he thinks. He kneels down to where Tony’s corpse is, lifeless on the ground. His armor’s fallen off in places, leaving his arms bare. 

(Tony was  _ dead. _ God.)

Something flickered in the corner of his eye, and he tilted his head to see some sort of -screen?- going blank on Tony’s wrist, a clear piece of glass clearly sewn to look natural over his actual skin. It flickers off with not so much as a whisper. Steve looks down for a second, and thinks,  _ oh.  _

The name  _ Steve Rogers  _ is written, clear as day, on Tony’s wrist, in ink black Spencerian script. Steve’s handwriting. 

Something in his chest falls apart, a clean break. “Tony-” he says, feeling like there’s glass in his throat. All those times he’d thought- all those  _ dreams- _

Tony’s dead. He thinks,  _ to hell with it.  _

He undoes the two buttons of the cuff on his wrist and lets the cloth fall to the floor. 

  
There, scratched out in manic chicken scratch lettering, is the name  _ Tony Stark.  _ It’s gone pale white. 


End file.
